Timor Island is divided in East Timor, an independent country, and West Timor, which belongs to Indonesia. You hardly hear about West Timor, because very few foreigners visit it.

I think it helps to understand Indonesia better if you consider it as a union of many smaller countries/islands. For instance, except for the common use of Indonesian as “lingua franca”, and the physical feature of the majority of people, we hardly saw anything in common between Bali, Flores and West Timor. These three islands have different cultures, architecture styles, religions (people are mostly Christian in West Timor, hinduist in Bali, muslim in Flores) and their towns look completely different. The capital of West Timor is Kupang. After visiting Kupang, we got even further from Indonesian cultures: we headed east, towards the interior of the island, to experience the unique culture and lifestyle of a handful of tribes of remote Papuan origin.

West Timor is neither poor, neither rich. There are some small towns with flat elementary architecture brick houses, some restaurants, bars, modern supermarkets and quite good quality main roads. Sorry to say, but urban areas were very dirty. Piles of plastic rubbish were flying around and collecting in the water channels, but this does not apply to the tribes in the interior as they do not consume the massive production stuff.

The tribes, which we wanted to visit, are one of the few remains of pre-Malay cultures, that lived in Indonesia thousands of years ago. They could stay isolated without mixing too much with the Malay who live on the coast, they have not been found by the Dutch nor by the Portuguese during colonial times, and still today keep their unique traditions and quite an archaic lifestyle, hardly influenced by the rest of the world.

Nowadays, there are sandy roads to reach those tribes. We could drive up to the village entrances, except for the last we visited, called Tamkesi for which we had to climb a hill on foot. We took a local guide from Kupang, who stayed with us and took us around the island in his car.

The tribes of the interior of West Timor welcome a handful of tourists each year. They are entirely aware of the development of the surrounding towns (the closest in a distance of at least 50 km). Except for some teenagers leaving to the cities or marrying people outside the tribe, the remaining society keeps their lifestyle and live without modern machines, phones, electricity, often manually produces materials for clothing and cook what they grow locally.

Fatumnasi tribe

Fatumnasi tribe was the most modern tribe out of all four tribes visited during our tour. We could see and experience the life in their old-style houses, but there was already a quite good quality road passing by, a modernish village was already being built, and some families were living in brick houses.

We had a chance to stay overnight in the old-style house. It was quite cold as this tribe is in a mountain area. I remember our French friends (we shared the car with other two tourists) with dark blue lips coming out of the bathroom in the early morning, telling me, “Inga, my advice is don’t think, just drop that bucket of water on you”. It was freezing. The water, the weather, everything. The bathroom, of course, was just a tiny kiosk of four walls and some buckets of water left for us.

The most exciting part of staying with Fatumnasi tribe, was the cooking and hanging out in the evening. The local hut was full of smoke. The smog was so thick that it was difficult to see, and we were continuously coughing. The whole atmosphere was somewhat bizarre. Outside, on the trees, monkeys were sitting on the branches and watching us. To get into the house, we had to bend because the entrance door was tiny and low. The dinner cooking took place inside the main house, which was separate from our sleeping house. If I were not there, I would not believe that so many faunae can fit in maximum 5-10 square metre tent-like house. There were pigeons sleeping on all corners, dogs, chickens, a few local families with children surrounding an open fire in the middle with greasy pans on top, and us, four aliens, dropped there from another planet.

Boti Kingdom

We had dinner with the King! We slept in the village of the King! We made some pictures, eat popcorn and shared local drugs with the King!

I am excited because this is the only time I got so close to someone titled King. We stayed in this royal village for 24 hours. It was a “weekend” day – the 9th after eight days of work – their week has nine days. Interestingly, it is not allowed to do anything on this day (maybe this applies only to men because women still cooked). Men were just sitting around under the trees all day long.

None tribe

We have passed by this tribe on the way and spent only a few hours there. Not just doing nothing, but meeting local people, playing with their puppy, walking around while followed by groups of kids, visiting sacret tree where all important tribe decitions are made and trying the local drugs called betel nut. The tribe has offered it to us as a symbol of friendship.

 

Tamkesi tribe

This was our favourite tribe.

The tribe community consists of twenty-one families. They have their leader, their laws and their own court. It was said to be Christian. Though, their belief that the rocky mountain in front is holy and sacrificing animals for good luck on top of it did not sound Christian to me. People were very kind to us. They showed us their village around, explained some of their traditions, cooked some food, and were very excited to take photos and watch them on the little photo camera or phone screen.

Tamkesi tribe was quite difficult to reach – the challenging road is accessible only during dry season. Still, the last piece of the road is a very steep hill covered by rocks which we had to climb. Very few tourists come here.

Till the last minute, we did not know if they would accept us, because nobody informed them about our visit. How could you if there are no phones and no any other village nearby? Also, Tamkesi tribe was known to be the wildest and the weirdest, with lots of rules and unique traditions. For example, if you drop anything or fall down, it is bad luck for the whole village. There would be a court called to decide how you could minimise the damage caused (usually, they decide on some penalties).

The village of Tamkesi is on a rocky hill, and all the paths are tricky and slippery due to the rocks. Therefore, it was quite stressful not to fall down and not to drop anything. Luckily, they don’t cut heads or sacrifice tourists, because hardly anyone could escape from this remote location.

Atambua town

After visiting the road trip, and before heading to East Timor, we decided to stay and rest for a few days in Atambua town. We knew that in Atambua our money had much more value than in expensive and touristic Dili, so it was the right place to stay in a decent hotel, eat plenty of cheap, delicious grilled fish, and relax.

Adriano was chatting with locals while waiting for the grilled fish in the local street restaurant. By the way, we studied Indonesian before the trip, and by this point, Adriano was already quite good at it. A local guy asked him in which hotel we were staying. “Hotel Timor”, he said.
“Ah, the one with the crocodile!”
“What??” So it turned out that the hotel, where we were staying since almost two days, kept as a pet a 4 metres long saltwater crocodile.
It was behind a fence inside the garden, less than 10 meters from our room.